Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to electronic devices, and more particularly to electronic devices with networking capabilities.
Background Art
Configuring electronic devices to automatically communicate presents a version of the proverbial “chicken and egg” problem. In traditional Wi-Fi and ad hoc networks, a first device serves as an access point, while another device serves as a client. The access point is configured with the communication parameters of the network. The device joining the network is a client. To find the access point, the client needs to know communication parameters of the access point's network. However, the client needs to receive this network information from the access point. If the client device does not have the communication parameters of the network, it cannot find the access point. At the same time, unless the access point can communicate with another device, e.g., the client, there is no network. Accordingly, its network parameters are worthless because if the client knows who the access point is, it can create its own network. Thus, it needs to know the access point to get network communication parameters, but knowledge of the access point renders the requirement of these communication parameters moot.
The traditional way of solving this is for a user to program network communication parameters into the client, thereby allowing the client to join the access point on a designated network. There are many techniques for doing this, including those in the IEEE 802.11 standard, which is used for Wi-Fi technology. While this works well in practice, it is slow and tedious as the client device is unable to “automatically” begin communicating with a particular network due to the problems mentioned above. These problems are exacerbated in establishing device-to-device piconets due to the fact that only two devices are in the network. While the 802.11 standard sets forth device-to-device network establishment protocols communication on a device-to-device basis with 802.11z, these still require an access point and a corresponding association.
It would be advantageous to have an improved method and system for establishing ad hoc peer-to-peer networks.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.